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What happened in Israel? The Hamas attack, its grim toll and what’s next, explained

(JTA) — Saturday was a day of bloodshed unprecedented in Israel’s history. 

Beginning in the morning of a Jewish holiday, hundreds of militants broke through the barrier between Israel and Gaza and spread into more than 20 locations, killing 300 Israelis on the streets, in their homes and at an outdoor festival, taking some 100 hostage and injuring more than 1,800. 

In a country whose chronology is punctuated with wars, terror attacks and military offensives, Saturday stood out in its horror. Nothing like this has ever happened in Israel, and Israelis are comparing the day to 9/11 — and asking how their vaunted military could have been so unprepared for such a major assault. 

Nearly a day after they invaded, the militants — sent by the terror group Hamas — appear to have been mostly but not entirely cleared out of Israeli territory. But the fighting is just beginning. While the day’s grim tally is not yet clear, a huge number of Israelis have been taken hostage in Gaza, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is promising an unmitigated war on Gaza, which has seen repeated rounds of conflict with Israel over the past 15 years. 

“Hamas has launched a cruel and evil war,” Netanyahu said in a televised address. “We will win this war, but it will carry a very heavy price. This is a difficult day for all of us.”

Is this the worst Israel-Hamas fighting?

Hamas, a Palestinian terror group, has launched attacks on Israeli civilians for decades and has governed the Gaza Strip for more than 15 years. During that time, it has launched barrages of missiles at Israeli cities on the Gaza border and beyond, sending residents fleeing for shelter, and Israel has responded with airstrikes and offensives that have killed thousands of Palestinians in the coastal strip. 

Israel launched ground invasions of Gaza in 2008 and 2014. The most recent major round of conflict between the two sides took place in 2021. 

But Hamas has never attacked Israel as it did on Saturday. While it has previously built a network of tunnels to infiltrate Israel, Saturday’s invasion was on a much larger scale. Militants broke through a barrier built by Israel, attacked by sea and began killing people in 20 different cities and towns. Makeshift bands of Israeli civilians battled the Hamas operatives while the Israeli military belatedly mobilized.

The militants also took a large number of hostages back to Gaza, in addition to holding hostages in a kibbutz cafeteria and a private home in Israel. 

They captured two ambulances and an Israeli tank. They took control of the police station in the border city of Sderot for some 20 hours. They overran an Israeli military base.

A portion of the violence, and many of the graphic videos circulating on social media, came from an all-night party near the border, where revelers fled Hamas, but where some were taken captive into Gaza. 

Along with the ground invasion, Hamas sent volleys of missiles at targets across the country.

By the end of the day, the official death toll had reached 300 — including many civilians and the commander of the Israel Defense Forces’ Nahal Brigade, one of the most senior Israeli military officials to be killed in recent years. 

That is a stark contrast with the rocket fire which — due in part to Israeli warning and missile defense systems — has historically had a low civilian death toll. Saturday was one of the bloodiest days in the history of israel. 

How has the IDF responded?

Israeli-Palestinian violence has escalated all year, but the epicenter of that fighting has been in Jerusalem and the West Bank, not Gaza. A flareup of fighting between Hamas and Israel earlier this year ended after five days. 

But as the day progressed, it became clear that Hamas’ attack took Israel by surprise. Residents of the small cities and kibbutzim on the border, absent any help by the IDF, resorted to forming armed bands and attempting to clear out the Hamas fighters themselves. A senior local official was killed while trying to defend his town. 

A day after the attack started, it appeared the IDF had regained control over the area. But that was after 24 hours that included news no Israeli expected to hear: that Hamas had taken control of an army base and police station; that it had captured military and medical vehicles; and that it had taken hostages to Gaza. 

The invasion came as Israel’s government has been occupied with other matters, including a contentious effort to weaken Israel’s court system and a possible diplomatic accord with Saudi Arabia. The future of those initiatives is unclear. Instead, exactly 50 years after Israel was caught by surprise by the invasions that began the Yom Kippur War, the country was once again asking how this could have happened. 

“These days there’s no king in Israel,” Haaretz reporter Amir Tibon posted online, quoting a Bible verse meant to evoke a sense of disorder. “Take care of yourselves.”

What will happen to the hostages? Does Israel negotiate for hostages?

According to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, 100 Israelis have been taken by Hamas and brought into Gaza. If that number, or anything of its magnitude, is accurate, it would be many more than the group has ever captured. 

Hamas kidnappings have, in the past, led to Israeli military operations and to at least one prisoner exchange. 

In 2006, Hamas took one soldier, Gilad Shalit, hostage. Israel sent troops into Gaza following his capture but was unable to recover him. Soon afterward, the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah took two other Israeli soldiers captive in an incident that launched the 2006 Lebanon War.

Five years later, in 2011, Shalit was freed in an exchange with a controversial legacy: Nearly 1,000 Palestinian prisoners were released in return for the soldier. Indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas led to the deal.

Three years after that, in 2014, some of the Palestinian prisoners released in the Shalit deal were involved in another kidnapping of Israelis — the abduction and subsequent murder of three Israeli teens in the West Bank. That incident led to the 2014 Gaza War, which saw Israel invade the territory and lasted 50 days. 

If Hamas has abducted 100 Israeli civilians and soldiers, it will be another element of Saturday’s violence with no precedent in history, though in 1976, Palestinian hijackers took more than 100 hostages at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. Nearly all of those hostages were freed in a famous operation in which the only Israeli soldier to die was Yoni Netanyahu, the current prime minister’s brother.

What will happen next?

Little is clear except that Israel’s leaders have promised a large-scale war in Gaza. 

“The IDF will immediately activate all of its capabilities to destroy Hamas’ abilities,” Netanyahu said Saturday. “We will forcefully avenge this black day they have forced upon Israel and its citizens.”

That almost certainly means a ground invasion of Gaza, which promises to bring more death and destruction. Israeli airstrikes on Gaza have already reportedly killed more than 200 people, and masses of reservists have been called up. 

It is too soon to tell how long the coming war will last or how wide-ranging it will be. The last ground invasion of Gaza, in 2014, lasted 50 days and ended with more than 70 Israelis and more than 2,100 Palestinians dead. 

To conduct the new campaign, centrist Yair Lapid, the leader of Israel’s parliamentary opposition, has called for Netanyahu to form an emergency government that would include centrist parties as well as his current religious and far-right partners. Such an emergency government was also formed during the Six Day War in 1967. 

An emergency government including opposition parties would likely spell an end — or at least a significant pause — for the issue that until Saturday was causing widespread strife in Israel: the government’s judicial overhaul. A government with centrists would not approve such an overhaul, and it is less likely to move forward in the middle of a war. Protests against the overhaul have likewise been put on pause. 

What this means for Israel’s talks with Saudi Arabia is also unclear, but any deal between the two countries was meant to include Israeli concessions to the Palestinian Authority — something Israel would likely be less inclined to agree to while fighting in Gaza. 

“At this moment, I won’t address who is to blame or why we were surprised,” Lapid said in a video message. “This is not the time or the place. We will stand united against our enemies. Israel is at war.”

—
The post What happened in Israel? The Hamas attack, its grim toll and what’s next, explained appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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The BBC Documentary That Paints Every Israeli as an Extremist

The Jewish community of Beit El in Judea and Samaria. Photo: Yaakov via Wikimedia Commons.

Louis Theroux first visited the West Bank in 2011 to film a documentary titled Louis and the Ultra-Zionists, part of his long-running series for the BBC. Back then, he at least seemed to possess a trace of journalistic curiosity. Even the title signaled a degree of editorial caution — framing his subjects as a small, ideological fringe rather than representative of Israeli society as a whole.

At the time, Theroux made an effort to clarify that he was profiling a narrow segment of Israelis. He showed legally purchased Jewish homes (sold by Arab landowners, no less) and acknowledged the regular — and at times deadly — terror attacks faced by Israeli civilians living in the area, often requiring military protection. There was condescension, certainly. But there was also context.

Fast-forward to 2024, and the curiosity is gone — though the bemused, slightly smug expression remains. His new BBC documentary, Louis and the Settlers, drops even the soft qualifiers. No “ultra.” No nuance. Just “settlers.” And with that, Theroux makes it clear: half a million Israelis living in the West Bank are one and the same — extremists who, we’re told, want every last Palestinian removed from the land.

This time, the documentary doesn’t begin with questions. It begins with conclusions. And Theroux uses a brief, unrepresentative snapshot of life in the West Bank to draw sweeping indictments of the entire Israeli state.

The message is unmistakable: Israel is the problem. Settlers are the villains. And Palestinians are passive, blameless victims of a colonial project.

Within the opening minutes, Theroux plants his ideological flag. He refers to the West Bank as “Palestinian territory” and describes every Israeli community within it as illegal under international law — a sharp departure from his more qualified approach 14 years earlier.

And while his personal views seep in throughout the film, they become crystal clear during one exchange at a checkpoint, where an Israeli soldier casually refers to their location as “Israel.” Theroux shoots back: “We’re not in Israel, are we?”

And just like that, the BBC and Louis Theroux have redrawn Israel’s borders. No Knesset debate needed.

Erasing History to Blame the Massacre

The timing of this return trip is no accident. The film comes in the shadow of the October 7 Hamas massacres — the day 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered, families were burned alive in their homes, and children were dragged into Gaza. And yet, Theroux barely mentions it.

The few passing references to October 7 serve not to inform the audience — but to imply that Israel may be exploiting its own dead to justify further expansion. It’s not an investigation. It’s an accusation. And it allows him to skip over thousands of years of Jewish history in order to frame the current war in Gaza as a convenient cover story for Israeli “aggression.”

Take Hebron, for example. Theroux tells viewers that “in 1968, the year after [the West Bank] was occupied by Israel, a community of Jewish settlers moved in illegally. They now number some 700.” He fails to mention that in 1895 — decades before the modern state of Israel existed — Hebron had a Jewish population of 1,429.

Jews have lived in Hebron since antiquity — it’s where, according to Jewish tradition, Abraham purchased the Cave of the Patriarchs. Modern records date the community back centuries, despite discrimination under Ottoman rule and bans on Jewish prayer at holy sites. In 1929, Arab rioters carried out a massacre, wiping out Hebron’s Jewish population. Dozens were murdered; the rest were expelled. Under Jordanian rule from 1948 to 1967, Jews were banned from the city entirely. When they returned after the Six-Day War — not as colonists, but as a displaced community coming home — Theroux picks up the story there and calls it “illegal.”

On the Six-Day War itself, Theroux offers no context. No mention of the Arab armies preparing to destroy Israel. No mention of Israel’s preemptive strike against an existential threat.

According to The Settlers, Israel simply “occupied” — full stop.

Palestinian Terrorism? Not Even a Footnote.

Theroux visits Evyatar, a small Jewish community near the Palestinian town of Beita, and uses it as a stand-in for the entire West Bank. Beita is depicted as a symbol of peaceful resistance: a proud, ancient Palestinian village standing firm against violent settlers backed by IDF soldiers.

It’s a neat story. Too neat. Because missing from the story are years of organized, violent riots from Beita — complete with Molotov cocktails, burning Stars of David, and Nazi swastikas. All carefully omitted to preserve the narrative: Palestinians peaceful, settlers aggressive. Facts that don’t fit? Left on the cutting room floor.

Meanwhile, Israeli nationalism is treated as something sinister and unsettling — a moral aberration to be examined. The notion that Jews might want sovereignty or security is met with thinly veiled suspicion. Yet Hamas’ goal of a Jew-free Palestine, explicitly laid out in its charter, is never mentioned. Nor is the Palestinian Authority’s “pay-for-slay” policy, which literally incentivizes terrorism by rewarding those who murder Israelis — including women and children.

These aren’t fringe details. They’re central to understanding the region. And Theroux knows it. He just doesn’t care.

The BBC’s Complicity

That The Settlers aired on the BBC — a publicly funded broadcaster once seen as a gold standard of global journalism — says plenty. Not just about Louis Theroux’s agenda, but about the institutional direction of the BBC itself. This wasn’t a rogue filmmaker sneaking bias past the editors. This was bias built into the foundation — signed off, packaged, and broadcast under the banner of credibility.

There is, of course, no problem with scrutinizing Israeli policy, and no issue with questioning the settlement enterprise or highlighting the tensions in the West Bank. But journalism — real journalism — demands context. It demands precision. It demands at least a passing familiarity with the full scope of the story.

Theroux offers none of that. He arrives with a predetermined script and casts his roles accordingly: Hero. Villain. Victim. Oppressor. And when reality refuses to cooperate? It’s left out.

Louis Theroux didn’t return to Israel to understand it. He returned to flatten it. To reduce its complexity to a morality play — and to ensure everyone knows the antagonist is.

The Settlers isn’t a documentary. It’s a hit piece. And the BBC handed him the camera — then applauded the performance.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

The post The BBC Documentary That Paints Every Israeli as an Extremist first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Indian Army Kills Islamist Terrorist Linked to 2002 Murder of Jewish-American Journalist Daniel Pearl

Jewish-American Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan in 2002. Photo: Screenshot

The Indian government announced on Thursday that its military forces had killed “Pakistan’s most wanted terrorist,” who was connected to the 2002 murder of Jewish-American Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl.

On Wednesday, India launched “Operation Sindoor,” which the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claims is targeted at dismantling “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

The operation came after Pakistani terrorists killed 26 Hindu tourists in Kashmir last month amid escalating tensions between the two countries.

In a post on X, the BJP confirmed that during this week’s operation, the Indian army killed Islamist terrorist Abdul Rauf Azhar, who was involved in numerous terrorism plots, including the 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight, the 2001 terror attack on the Indian Parliament, and the 2016 Pathankot Air Force base attack.

Azhar’s involvement in the 1999 hijacking led to the release of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British-born al-Qaeda member with close ties to Pakistan’s intelligence services, who later was involved in the kidnapping and subsequent murder of 38-year-old Pearl, who was covering the war on terror as a journalist when he was abducted.

In a statement on X, Pearl’s father, Judea, addressed initial reports regarding Azhar’s death and his connection to his son’s murder.

“I want to clarify: Azhar was a Pakistani extremist and leader of the terrorist organization Jaish-e-Mohammed. While his group was not directly involved in the plot to abduct Danny, it was indirectly responsible. Azhar orchestrated the hijacking that led to the release of Omar Sheikh — the man who lured Danny into captivity,” he said.

In 2002, the Jewish-American journalist was abducted and killed by a group of Islamist terrorists connected to Azhar’s militant network, which had ties to al-Qaeda and Jaish-e-Mohammed, a terror group aiming to separate Kashmir from India and incorporate it into Pakistan.

On Jan. 27, 2002, an email was sent to several Pakistani and US media organizations, which included several photos, stating that Pearl was being held in “inhumane” conditions to protest the US treatment of Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners in Cuba. Photo: Screenshot

Originally stationed in New Delhi as the South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, Pearl later moved to Pakistan to investigate terrorism following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City.

After kidnapping Pearl at a restaurant in Karachi, southern Pakistan, the Islamist terrorists, who identified themselves as the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, accused him of being an Israeli spy and sent the United States a list of demands for his release.

However, Washington did not meet their demands, and Pearl was ultimately executed after being held captive for five weeks.

His wife, Mariane Pearl, gave birth to a baby boy, Adam D. Pearl, in Paris later that year. On the Daniel Pearl Foundation website, she said, “Adam’s birth rekindles the joy, love, and humanity that Danny radiated wherever he went.”

The post Indian Army Kills Islamist Terrorist Linked to 2002 Murder of Jewish-American Journalist Daniel Pearl first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Jewish Jewelry Shop Owners Brutally Assaulted in Tunisia Days Before Annual Pilgrimage

A Jewish jewelry shop owner in Djerba, Tunisia, was brutally attacked by a man wielding a machete. Photo: Screenshot

A Jewish jewelry shop owner in Djerba, Tunisia, was brutally attacked by a man wielding a machete just days before the Tunisian island was set to host its annual Jewish pilgrimage, which is expected to draw thousands of visitors.

On Wednesday morning, two Jewish men — owners of a jewelry shop in the center of the island, located off Tunisia’s southeast coast — were physically assaulted by a man carrying a large knife.

Although the attack was halted when one of them screamed — alerting members of the local Jewish community who subdued the assailant — one of them was left severely injured.

According to local media reports, the attacker had surveyed the island the day before, visiting several stores to identify those owned by Jews. Local police arrested him shortly following the assault.

After the attack, one of the owners was admitted to the hospital with severe injuries. The 50-year-old Jewish man had his fingers severed during the assault and underwent surgery to reattach them.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar condemned the attack and expressed his wishes for a swift recovery to the victims.

“This attack comes two years after the previous deadly assault that claimed Jewish lives and the lives of security personnel during the Lag BaOmer celebration,” the top Israeli diplomat wrote in a post on X.

“I call on the Tunisian authorities to take all necessary measures to protect the Jewish community,” Saar continued.

Djerba is home to the majority of Tunisia’s Jewish community, numbering about 2,000 people, and is also where the renowned El Ghriba Synagogue, one of North Africa’s oldest synagogues, is located.

The attack comes just a week before Jewish pilgrims are expected to arrive on the island for the Lag B’Omer holiday, when thousands gather annually for three days of festivities. The annual pilgrimage to El Ghriba Synagogue, scheduled for May 15 and 16 this year, draws visitors from around the world.

The synagogue has been targeted in multiple terrorist attacks over the years, including in 1985, 2002, and 2023.

Two years ago, a shooting at the synagogue claimed the lives of two Jewish cousins and three police officers. Aviel Hadad, a 30-year-old Israeli goldsmith, and Ben Hadad, a 42-year-old Frenchman who had traveled to join the festivities, were among the victims.

The post Jewish Jewelry Shop Owners Brutally Assaulted in Tunisia Days Before Annual Pilgrimage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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